Rectangle tool - Control panel and link not working

[Jim_Palik]

I am on a Wondows 10 platform using AI 26.31

1. When creating a new rectangle from the Tool panel the Rectangle control panel appears below the Menu Bar. I usually have many rectangles on an artboard. Sometimes when selecting different rectangles, sometimes the Rectangle control panel changes to Path. Why? How do I force the Rectangle control panel to be shown when this happens?
2. When I create a rectangle I usually want Stroke, Width, and Height to be unlinked. For some reason, I cannot make this work. The stroke always changes when I change either the width or height and intermittently the width and height remain linked when turning link off.

• How do I keep stroke fixed.
• Any idea why link and link off does work consistently?

Both of these problems are driving me crazy. I look forward to your reply, Jim

[Jacob Bugge · Accepted solution]

Jim,

It may help helpers if you can post a screenshot, upreferably using the Insert Photos button at the top of the Reply box.

• For fixed stroke, you need to have Scale Strokes & Effects turned off.
• Sometimes Illy works in mysterious ways.

If it is happening in just one document it may be corrupted.

Otherwise there may be some other corruption, possibliy temporary.

The following is a general list of things you may try when:

A) The issue is not in a specific file,
B) You have a printer correctly installed, connected, and turned on if it is physical printer. Or you may use Adobe PDF/Acrobat Distiller as the default printer instead.
C) It is not caused by issues with opening a file from external media.
D) It is not caused by other applications (you may close down/disable everything else running, including browsers and antivirus, then try again). There are quite a few usual suspects that may disturb and confuse Illy (job description Adobe Illustrator), and they can make her move in mysterious ways (even more than usual, some would say).

You may have tried/done some of them already; 1) and 2) and 3) are the easy ones for temporary strangenesses, 4), 5) and 6), are specifically aimed at possibly corrupt preferences.

If possible/applicable, you should save current artwork first, of course.

1) Close down Illy and open again;
2) Restart the computer (you may need to do it at least 5 times);
3) Log out of your Adobe account and log back in;

4) Close down Illy and press Ctrl+Alt+Shift/Cmd+Option+Shift during startup (easy but irreversible)

5) Follow the instructions here, you can preserve the preferences as described:
https://helpx.adobe.com/illustrator/using/setting-preferences.html

6) Maybe relevant for older versions Move the folder (follow the link with that name) with Illy closed (more tedious but also more thorough and reversible), for CS3 - CC you may find the folder here:

https://helpx.adobe.com/illustrator/kb/preference-file-location-illustrator.html

[Jim_Palik]

Thank you Jacob,

Do you know if it is possible to apply different stroke widths to individual sides of a rectangle?

Can I delete individual legs without deleting the whole rectangle?

Thanks again, Jim

[Jacob Bugge]

You are welcome, Jim.

To begin with the latest, to delete one side and get an open path, you can deselect, then Direct Select the side in question and press Delete, but only once.

There are different more or less cunning ways of getting different (apparent) Stroke Weights (including None) within the same rectangle, but which ways are worth pursuing depend on the exact appearance desired. One kind of way which may work in som cases is to have multiple strokes (Appearance panel) and/or use Dashes.

If you can post a screenshot, it will give possible good answers.